


October 9: "You shouldn't have come here."

by Qophia



Series: Qoph's Fictober 2018 [9]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Ficlet, Fictober, Gen, Halward Pavus' A+ Parenting, Humor, M/M, and better options than 'show up and shove an abuse survivor at his abuser', and halward's shitty abusive parenting, dorian's not in it but it's very much about him, or maybe not surprisingly if you've been following this cadash, surprisingly enough
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-29 00:24:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16252835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qophia/pseuds/Qophia
Summary: Halward Pavus climbed the stairs in the Gull and Lantern with a leaden tread. If his son was coming, it would not be tonight.





	October 9: "You shouldn't have come here."

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Paradigm_F](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paradigm_F/gifts).



> for PF, who (a) encouraged me to go with this idea instead of my first (much more boring) thought, and (b) definitely has my back when i need it
> 
> if you guys hadn't noticed, i really like this cadash
> 
> as always, feedback is <3

Halward Pavus climbed the stairs in the Gull and Lantern with a leaden tread. If his son was coming, it would not be tonight. Dorian had been spotted leaving Skyhold, then repeatedly along the road. By all estimation, he should have arrived in Redcliffe today, but there had been no sign of him, even hours after the tavern downstairs had shuttered. Halward let himself into the laughably modest room he’d rented at the end of the hall, shut the door, and leaned his forehead against it with a sigh as he reached up to slide home the bolt.

“I honestly wasn’t sure—” began a voice from behind him.

“Kaffas!” The magister wheeled, robe flaring as he summoned a barrier on himself and flung magical illumination across the room.

“ _Wasn_ _’t sure_ ,” the voice continued, “whether you were deeply stupid, unspeakably arrogant, or incredibly desperate, to have come your own self.” In the half-dozen globes of light now hovering, Halward could see that it came from a dwarf, lounging in the room’s lone chair with his mud-crusted boots propped on the table. The golden undertones of the dwarf’s brown skin matched the bold tattoo that bordered his eyes and dropped down his nose and chin, a design that clearly predated the poorly set broken nose that had turned what had once been a vertical line into a more meandering jag. “With that dramatic performance just now, though,” he said, dropping his feet to the ground and leaning forward to brace his elbows on his knees, “I’m definitely leaning toward ‘desperate.’” A slight pause, and then he punctuated: “Hally.” When the muscles in Halward's jaw bunched as he clenched his teeth, the dwarf indulged in an insouciant half-smirk that tugged at the thoroughly disreputable pair of scars on the right side of his face—souvenirs from a knife fight, Halward guessed, if the hilts rising above the dwarf’s shoulders were any indication.

“You clearly have the advantage of me,” Halward said, his eyes roaming the space for his staff. He could have sworn he’d left it propped by the desk. “I assume you are some Inquisition associate of my son?”

“Sure, why not,” the dwarf said. “You won’t find it, so you may as well stop looking.”

“I’m sorry?”

“This is going to be either a very long or a very short conversation if you want to keep playing stupid. The staff, Hally. I’m no stupider than you are: It’s out the window. I thought it would make things more comfortable if _you_ were a little _less_ comfortable.” There was that smirk again. “You could test how far blasting me without a focus would get you, but there’s that tricky dwarven magic resistance to contend with—and, of course, the magebane on my knives if you can’t drop me before I can cross a few yards.”

Halward pressed his lips together in the start of a grimace, but the dwarf was probably right about the impasse. He relaxed his stance and thinned the barrier.

The dwarf apparently took that for assent, as he leaned back in the chair again, propping an ankle on the opposite knee. One hand dived into his coat and pulled out an apple before Halward could wonder what he was reaching for. “So. Now that we’re both comfortably uncomfortable, here’s the deal.” He slung one arm over the back of the chair and starting tossing the apple in the other hand to punctuate his points. “One: If your aim is to kidnap Dorian, you shouldn’t have come here. Two: If your aim is to disrupt the Inquisition, you shouldn’t have come here. Three: If your aim is to make Dorian feel even slightly more shit than he already does, you shouldn’t have come here. Four: If your aim is to fix whatever you fucked up, I’ll provisionally allow it. But,” the rogue said, catching the apple so he could point at the mage, “you run it by me first.” The accusing finger wrapped back around the apple, and the dwarf brought the red fruit to his mouth for a large bite.

As the initial adrenaline wore off, Halward’s shock was trickling away to be replaced by irritation. This... messenger? scout? bodyguard? lackey? was inserting himself somewhere he had no right to be. “And you think you can interfere with the affairs of the Magisterium? Just like that?”

The dwarf swallowed his bite of apple. “Oh, Hally,” he chuckled. “Even if you _were_ here on official business, I could free up a seat on the Magisterium tonight with no consequence more dire than signing off on the invoice for a tasteful funeral bouquet to your widow. And we both know this isn’t official business.”

Oh. Halward felt a sickening lurch in the pit of his stomach. “You’re the Inquisitor.”

Edric Cadash brought his hands together in a slow trio of claps. “Now he’s on the bronto! See, Hally, we’ve got at least one thing in common: We both like to show up for our own dirty work.”

Halward’s face twisted, and he raised a hand to rub his brow. “It’s not... Whatever you think of me, I simply want to speak with my son.”

“Okay, then. Scenario four? You _simply_ get to run it by me.”

“I fail to see what concern it is of yours!”

“Not my problem,” the Inquisitor said, his voice muffled as he took another bite of the apple. When Halward didn’t respond except to cross his arms, the dwarf circled the fruit in the air in a “go on” gesture.

“You can’t possibly be serious. This is ridiculous.”

“What, you want your own apple?”

“No!”

The dwarf’s eyes widened in exaggerated shock. “You want the rest of _my_ apple?”

“What?! No!”

“Oh, okay.” He took another bite and shifted it to one cheek as he spoke. “So you’re just convincing me how _very much_ you want to speak with your son by being an obstinate, querulous rock licker instead of doing the _one thing_ I told you was going to happen before you do.”

Halward’s arms tightened across his chest. “I...” The Inquisitor stared at him, chewing. “When Dorian left home, it was... not under the most amicable of circumstances.”

“You don’t say.” Pure deadpan, punctuated with the slow lift of the apple for another bite.

“I was utterly frustrated with him, with what I saw as his abrogation of responsibility to the family, and I... behaved... less than admirably.”

The Inquisitor nodded. “And?”

“And... I desire to express my regret for those choices and determine whether there is any possibility I might make amends.”

The Inquisitor was silent for a moment—or, at least, did not speak—as he finished the final bites of the apple. His scars pulled as his face fell into a glower. “To be frank, Hally, I wouldn’t trust a shifty shit like you alone with my least-favorite creditor, let alone a salroka.” He sighed and rubbed the back of his head where the hair was trimmed short, mouth relaxing from its scowl. “But Dorian wanted to come, and that’s his choice.” Something twisted inside Halward at that, for a moment. “So you spend tonight thinking _very carefully_ about how you are going to phrase that apology. Because if this turns into scenario three, I _cannot emphasize enough_ to you how much pressure I’m under to use up this quarter’s floral budget.” The Inquisitor bared his teeth in something that was very much not a grin, tossed the remains of his apple toward the back corner of the room without looking behind him, and was up and out the window before the core landed in the chamberpot with a clang. A few seconds later, the magister’s staff lofted neatly over the sill to land on the bed.

Halward dropped the last of his barrier and sagged against the door behind him.

If he was going to get this right, it was going to be a long night.


End file.
